


Grace In Your Heart And Flowers In Your Hair

by roachpatrol



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Consent Issues, F/M, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Pheromones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:52:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/pseuds/roachpatrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Get out,” Karkat growls, from the top of a staircase. His voice is thick and unsteady and he reeks of that red smell, it’s pouring off him, spiking up your heartrate. Sollux takes a startled breath, then another, and crowds up against your back. </p>
<p>“I mean it,” Karkat snarls. “I told you guys we were through, why the fuck are you here?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace In Your Heart And Flowers In Your Hair

“Which one is his, though,” Sollux asks. “I couldn’t triangulate his hive that precisely—”

“Please, Applesauce. It’s Karkat. He’ll have the cleanest hive with the brightest flags right in the middle of everything—ha! There. The one that smells like it’s cut out of Better Hives And Lawnrings.”

Sollux snickers uneasily. His anxiety’s a sour lemon tang in the back of your throat, close compliment to your own tension as you pick your way carefully between the borders of the lawnrings. It wouldn’t do to trespass _unintentionally_.

Karkat’s door is locked, of course, when you try it, and your quarry fails to respond to any amount of knocks or hailing. Neighbors— _witnesses_ —are starting to peer out of their hives. It’s a mixed-blood hivering, rust on up to green, and you’re not so blue someone won’t consider take an exploratory stab, at least at Sollux. You frown and go to draw the blade from your cane, thinking to lever the hinges off and get it over with, but Sollux makes a low smug noise in his throat and reaches past you. A flare of light and the handle twists smoothly. The door swings open. 

“Ladies first,” Sollux says nervously. You salute him with a middle finger and push forward, prickling with similar uneasiness. It wasn’t like Karkat had broken off with the two of you amicably, by any stretch of the imagination, invading his hive isn’t likely to make things better if he’d genuinely meant all the shit he’d said. 

You’re willing to bet he hadn’t. But still. You keep your blade ready. 

It smells... strange, in his hive. Clean gray scrubbed walls, tasteful black-and-white posters of movie stars and war heroes and game protags. Neatly tended furniture in respectable shades of gray-blue and violet, a little bit of imperial crimson here and there. Better Hives and Lawnrings would _weep_ , the interior of Vantas’s hive is practically a show piece. But the smell...

“What is that?” Sollux asks, hesitating on the doorstep, his nose wrinkling up. “TZ, what the fuck is going on? Is he sick? Is he—crazy, is this what crazy smells like?”

It’s a weird smell, bittersweet, fascinating and unnerving at once, and it seems to be smeared on _everything_. It makes you think of sunlight, hot and cruel and crimson, and the cloying brightseason fug of rotting cherries. 

“Red,” you say, licking your nose, stepping carefully. “Smells red in here.” Sollux snorts, but eases inside after you. 

“Get out,” Karkat growls, from the top of a staircase. His voice is thick and unsteady and he reeks of that red smell, it’s pouring off him, spiking up your heartrate. Sollux takes a startled breath, then another, and crowds up against your back. 

“I mean it,” Karkat snarls. “I told you guys we were through, why the fuck are you here?”

“You decided to permanently end a sweeps-long friendship over where we planted our citrus orchard in Anybeast Crossing,” you say. “You are not normally the most congenial and good natured of trolls, I’ll admit, but this particular incident was kind of alarming.”

“I wanted to say I was sorry in person,” Sollux says all in an awkward rush. “I don’t give a fuck what virtual square our pretend orange trees get fake planted, you assnugget, it was just a game. Would you stop sulking about it, it’s been two weeks and we’re worried.”

Karkat hisses, wet and ragged, and it stirs something hot inside you. “No,” he says thickly, “No, we’re not friends, you can’t just say sorry, get out. Fuck off.” 

“Make us!” you say, raising your cane, and he swallows hard, fumbles out a sickle. He smells angry, he smells scared, he smells so red, red as fire, red as hearts. Red as flush. Your own bloodpusher drops into your guts, and sticks there. You tuck your cane up under your arm and step back, suddenly at a complete loss. 

“Sure, I’ll make you,” Karkat croaks, advancing a single wobbly step forward. “Don’t think I won’t. Fucking hive invaders, where the—the fuck do you get off, I’ll tear your heads off, I’ll turn you inside out. You’ll be sorry. Get your cane back out, GC, let’s do this.”

“It’s your season,” you say softly. “You’re expecting the drones.” 

“He’s _what_ ,” Sollux says. 

“No,” Karkat says, and misses a step. He sits down hard and stays down, panting. “No,” he says again, wretched. “It’s not, I’m not. Just go away.”

“You’re younger than me!” Sollux says. “Aradia’s not even expecting yet!”

There’s a knock at the door. Karkat goes slate, stumbles to his feet, slips down the stairs. He’s a mess, it’s unnerving, and you and Sollux back away as he lurches forward. You want to giggle. You want this to be a joke. 

“Get out,” he mutters, “get out, guys, run!”

But you know: you can’t run from drones. You can feel Sollux’s stare boring into you, his frantic calculation. Karkat Vantas is a passionate jerk of an opponent and an even more exasperating partner, and yet somehow you’ve been playing one game after another with him for sweeps. He is your very good friend! You don’t think you’ll be expecting for practically another sweep, you’re not even sure you _can_ , physiologically, yet, but surely—with him, with a funny kid who’s a decent gamer and hilarious amounts of romantic—it wouldn’t be bad. It could be good, you could get through it.

You’d... you think you’d like to. 

You and Sollux trail along after him, quiet and determined, as he opens the door. 

All of you flinch at what’s waiting on the other side. You can’t help it. Vast and dark and spiny, it doesn’t smell like licorice. It smells like death, like the inside of corpses, like the lightless pits of caves where monsters lurk, like old, old, old blood. 

“Contribution,” it prompts. 

“I don’t have one,” Karkat croaks. 

“Karkat,” you say, and Sollux goes “KK, don’t be retarded—” but he just huddles into himself. You stride forward, furious, grab his shoulder. Make him look at you. “You’d rather _die_ than—” 

He smacks you right across the nose. Everything blues out, ringing, and you stumble back. Sollux’s squawking something and Karkat’s shouting back, and you focus on taking deep breaths through your mouth and not falling over. 

“—can’t let you,” Karkat’s babbling, “just get the fuck out, just go, you can’t die because of me why did you even have to _come_!”

“You’re our friend, you insecure lunatic!” Sollux shouts. He’s crackling with anger. “Did you really think we’d rather you died alone than touch your stupid junk!?”

“I’m going to die anyway!” Karkat shrieks, and makes a savage motion with his sickle. The tang of blood cuts through your haze, and that smell, vivid unreal crimson, hits you like a slap. 

Sollux jerks away, fetches up beside you. “Holy fuck,” he says. 

Karkat just laughs, short and sad, and turns back to the drone, holding his hand out like a battleflag. He’s trembling all over.

“I’m a mutant,” he says. “Shit was always going to end this way. Come on, you big ugly thing, let’s get it over with.”

“Contribution,” the thing says again, implacable. Karkat makes a furious little noise and smacks his hand wetly up against that pit-black carapace, smearing his blood like a shout. “Contribution.”

“Come on,” Karkat says again, more desperately, plucking at the thing’s spiny forearms, its cruel talons. “Come on, I don’t have one, come on! _Come on!_ ”

“Contribution.”

You can’t stand it. You come forward and wrap your arms around him, butt your forehead up against his own. “You dumb shit,” you hiss, “you selfish asshole, let us,” and you can feel the heat of Sollux at your side, the electric tang. He headbutts Karkat too, more sharply. 

“Contributors detected,” the drone rumbles, and then it moves. It taps your head with a claw longer than your arm, then taps Sollux. A prick of blood drawn from your crowns, a mote each of mustard and turquoise. It raises the vast black crescent up to its unfathomable face. “Sollux Captor. Terezi Pyrope. You have one hour to contribute.”

The three of you stare at each other in horror. Karkat’s been wiped blank and useless with shock, his sickle dangling loose from slack fingers. You feel a stab of hot loathing, though you’re not quite sure for who. What the fuck have you gotten yourselves into?

Sollux is starting to vibrate with something like the same aimless agitation you feel building up inside your own thorax so you slap him. It sends a shuddery electric thrill up your arm, slams into your bloodpusher and sets sparks ricocheting through your sinuses. Pain, you think wildly, maybe you can work with pain, you respect Sollux, he’s snide and competitive and wicked-clever, he could turn you inside-out with those psionics of his, he could give you a good fight. He could make you a good rival. But when you go to slap him again he just takes it, just hunches up scared instead of angry, and you feel gross and ashamed. 

You take a deep breath, flex your claws, taste blood in the back of your throat. You don’t know what to do, you can’t—if you keep hitting him he’ll eventually hit you back, but you _can’t_. Your blade, maybe, if you can just hurt him enough all at once—

“Okay,” Karkat says, abruptly, and crowds in between you two. “Okay, hey, no. Chill the fuck out.”

Sollux chirrs, relieved, and you have to swallow your own grateful chirp. Ash with Karkat Vantas, of all fucking people, but you’re glad to have him between you and Sollux. You still want to tear someone apart, but you’re increasingly certain who you’re furious with is your own self. You did this, you led Sollux into this, you thought you could just dance in and fix everything with a wave of your cane. 

“I’m so sorry,” Karkat says, at the same time Sollux blurts out, “God, KK, I’m sorry,” and you start laughing helplessly. 

“We’re all sorry,” you giggle, burying your face in your hands, “We’re the sorriest.”

“Eheh,” Sollux goes, a pathetic and wobbly little nonlaugh, and presses closer to Karkat. “Yeah, this is... this is pretty standard for us, isn’t it? Brightest badasses still planetside and we’re up to our plush rumps in piping hot BS.”

Karkat goes “Heh,” just as weakly, and there’s a click of horns. That smell spikes, that hungry, ready scent, compelling, and Sollux’s breath goes as ragged as Karkat’s. 

“You should kiss,” you say hoarsely. 

“What,” they both say in unison. 

“Karkat’s expecting,” you say tensely. “We’re not. So kiss.”

“You kiss him,” Sollux snaps, sounding terrified. Karkat makes a little hungry noise in his throat, almost a whimper, and something turns over heavily inside you. You can feel your pulse between your legs. 

“Maybe I will,” you snap back, and surge forward before you can second guess yourself. You take Karkat’s face between your hands and he lets you. His skin is feverishly warm, slick with sweat, and his hair, when you slide your fingers through it, is softer than you thought it’d be. When you brush the roots of his blunt horns he chirps, loud and raspy, just like the audio files in a pailing schoolfeed. 

Sollux makes a startled, breathy noise, not quite a chirp of his own, but close. Unmistakably interested. 

“Please,” Karkat says, sounding ashamed. Sounding desperate. “Oh god, Terezi, please, if you’re going to, just do it, I _need_ —” 

You put your mouth on his mouth. It’s hot and slimy and he sticks his tongue into your mouth immediately, his hands grabbing at your shirt. That smell swamps you, pours through you and he paws at your chest, grinds up against your thigh, god, that’s, that’s his bulge in there, you can feel his bulge through his pants. You can’t breathe. You shove him off, stumble back, gasp for breath. 

“Terezi,” he moans, clinging at your arm, “oh fuck—please—”

You hold him at arm’s length. You don’t know how you feel. You’re not sure _what_ you feel. Scared. Jangly with nerves. But your nook throbs, sharply, like your breasts. 

You’ve sunk your fingers into yourself, once, exploring. You wanted to know how all your parts fit together, so you gritted your fangs and curled your finger up inside and pressed till you could see a hint of your bulge in its stretched-apart bone-sheath, all dark and wrinkled and tender. It hurt like hell. It kind of hurts like that now, but dully, and with a rising tingle behind the ache, and even with that faint hint of arousal—fuck, let this be arousal, let this be genuine receptiveness—you can’t imagine how you’re going to fit a bulge up into yourself, much less get your own bulge out. You barely managed a finger.

“Your turn, hotshot,” you say, stalling for time, and shove Karkat at Sollux. Karkat whimpers, miserably, and Sollux takes a deep startled breath, then goes for it. They hit the floor in a tangle of sparks and spit. You want to laugh and cry and run away all at the same time. Instead, you go to fetch Karkat’s pail. 

On a hunch, you check the ablution chamber at the top of the stairs, and that’s where it is, tucked in the trap. It reeks up here, a thick sweaty smell, and the pail’s at the center of it. You’re terrified for a minute that it’d still have his fluid in it, but isn’t that the point? Your own fluid’s going to be in there soon enough. And it’s empty, or close enough, filled only with murky water. You tip it out, give the pail another rinse to be thorough. When you find yourself lingering, your fingers shaking a little on the rim, you stand up fast and swat the tap closed in one decisive moment. 

You can do this. 

Karkat’s gotten Sollux’s shirt off, when you come back downstairs, and your psionic friend seems to have retaliated by divesting Karkat of his shirt and also his pants and also what pretentions to dignity Karkat ever might have tried to lay claim to. He’s three fingers deep into Karkat’s nook and chirping hungrily while Karkat wails and claws at the floor and you can smell his bulge, slick and bright as a stick of dynamite, curled in a tight cuff around Sollux’s wrist. 

“He wants us,” Sollux murmurs to you, hoarse and rumbly. “Look at him, he never didn’t want us. Isn’t that right, KK, didn’t you want us? All your fucking talk.”

Karkat just cries and pushes up against Sollux, incoherent. You can hear the gross wet squelch of his nook, the slide and clench of his bulge and the scratch of his claws against the floor. 

“He’s going to spill all over you,” you say, and you feel that pulse in you again, that tingle. You say, “He’s going to make a terrible mess!” and Sollux and Karkat make the same hungry purr. 

“Good,” Sollux says savagely. “Gonna make him come everywhere, gonna take him _apart_.”

You realize, too late, that that wrenching chirr came from _you_. Sollux just laughs, breathlessly triumphant, and does something to make Karkat _scream_. Without even thinking about it you drop down to Karkat’s side, splay your fingers across his sweaty face. You want to be close, you want to see for yourself how he comes apart, what it’s like. How you even let yourself go like you’re going to need to. 

“Terezi,” Karkat whimpers, his voice shredded nearly out of recognition. He sounds like something inside his throat’s been stretched to snapping, he sounds wild. You don’t like it, the way he says your name like this, like some stupid prayer. You kiss him anyway and he’s not as aggressive, this time, his mouth’s softer. He yields to you. You feel his teeth and his tongue and the strange rough ridges on the top of his mouth. Somehow you’d never really thought about anyone _else_ having those ridges. You feel stupid and scared and too young for this shit, but he clutches at you desperately when you try to pull away again.

You don’t know how to let go. You don’t know how to ask him to show you. 

“Let me,” Karkat gasps, then plucks at the waist of your jeans. “I, I want, can I, fuck, please?”

“Uh,” you say. 

“Oh my god go for it,” Sollux says. 

You can’t really think of anything more likely to work. You fumble your zip down, wriggle out of your jeans and briefs. You don’t feel sexy, sitting bareassed on Karkat’s livingblock floor in just a shirt, but Sollux whistles approvingly and you manage a laugh. You primp your hair at him, make a simpering quackbeast face. 

“Scandalous,” he says, exaggerating his lisp, and you laugh again, a little more easily. Then Karkat gets his mouth on your nook and you squawk. It’s _weird_ , his hot tongue going everywhere and the shocking coolness of the air against the spit trails. It tickles and you laugh, and then Sollux is giggling too. 

“How are, eheheh, how’re we this bad at sex?” he laughs. 

“You aren’t,” Karkat purrs, and okay. Okay. That was hot. He runs his tongue up your slit more insistently, then pushes in like he’d pushed into your mouth earlier, and okay. You breathe in, out. That feels pretty good. 

He licks steadily at you, _into_ you, and it feels so different from your finger. Slicker, warmer, more embarrassing. You know Sollux is watching you, starting to rub at himself with his free hand, that his other hand is up inside Karkat and making him huff those ticklish moans and cries into your skin, and it all feels like it’s working, bit by bit. Each time he chirps it stokes that tense warmth inside you a little warmer, a little tighter. You hook your fingers around Karkat’s smooth horns and that seems to be too much for him, he convulses and Sollux curses, low and startled, and that crimson smell spikes in time with the sound of thick liquid spattering the floor. 

“Yeah, come apart,” Sollux says roughly. “Come on, lose yourself for me, you asshole, let go, KK, give it up—” He doesn’t even sound like himself anymore, he sounds insane. “God, yeah, look at you, you filthy—you stupid _mess._ ”

There’s a nasty squelching sound and Karkat cries out in high broken sobs, “Oh god, oh fuck, oh god,” his mouth gone slack against your nook. You feel a stab of pity, genuine and sharp, and stroke his horns again. 

“Leave off him, Appleberry,” you say. “He’s done.”

“No, I... you guys need...” Karkat paws your knee uncoordinatedly. You take a deep breath, kiss the top of his head. When he tilts his face up for another hot, devouring assault on your mouth he’s all sloppy with spit and with—yourself, isn’t he, that’s the taste of your own fluid on his tongue. It’s sharp and sour but it winds you up further and you think you can do this, between your legs you’re all warm and kind of hungry and you think that you could stand something more in you than a tongue or a finger.

Sollux eases up to you, cautiously, and you realize you’re trembling. Your bulge still hasn’t come out—you don’t know how to _make_ it, and you’re trembling. You’re scared.

“TZ,” he says softly, and leans up against you very slowly. His cheek’s burnt gold where you struck him, and he makes a soft shaky little “ha,” when you kiss the bruise. His hand’s still smeared with crimson, three fingers dripping with it down his palm, and you catch it up and press it to your lips. He goes twitchy when you lick at his fingers and you’re not actually sure if he’s trying not to laugh or to chirp, but you think you need—more, of this, this compelling sex-scent, you need to saturate yourself with it, you need to stop thinking. 

Fingers trace up your thighs, Sollux’s and Karkat’s both, and you feel the warmth up your spine, the tentative desire for more of this. Karkat kisses one of your horns and he seems a little calmer now, less frantic, if only in comparison. 

“It’ll be ok,” he mutters. “We’ll be ok, right?”

“Yeah,” you breathe, and your hips hitch up, the fingers that are brushing at you, tracing circles into you, teasing little shocks all through you. This feels _good_. “Yeah,” you say again, and when long fingers push all the way into you, farther, pressing up, you feel your sheath stretch tight. 

“Oh,” Karkat says, and wraps an arm around your shoulder. “Yeah, there, Sollux, she’s—”

“Yeah,” he says, and the fingers press farther, rub back and forth at that spot, that amazing tight spot inside you that makes you squirm and hitch and chirp, easing you out of yourself. 

“You like that,” Sollux says, and you nod, trying to take deep breaths. You can’t get enough air, and you feel dizzy and off-balance. You’re clinging, embarrassingly, clutched on to Karkat’s wrist and Sollux’s shoulder like a wiggler but you feel like if you let go you’ll—you don’t know. Get lost. There’s nothing left in the world but these two and the rising, disorienting sweetness of hands against these unfamiliar parts of yourself. Someone’s stroking your emerging bulge, now, coaxing it up into the slick tunnel of their fingers so gently you hardly even feel vulnerable. 

“I can take—more,” you manage, groping for coherency, control—“come on, we are on a schedule, I’m fine.”

“You’re great,” Karkat says, and Sollux huffs and squeezes your bulge. 

“You’re _more_ than great,” he says. “I don’t know if I, uh.”

“If you what,” you say, worried, and Karkat giggles. 

“Oh shit,” he says. “Not just shallow in the pan, are you?”

“Fuck you,” Sollux says sourly, but your heart’s already sinking into your bilesac. “No, hey, TZ, come the fuck at me. I can take you.” He tugs your bulge and you growl at the sharp shock of desire, the obvious invitation. You know how to do this, in theory, and your bulge seems to have plenty of ideas of its own. You put your thing in his thing and he puts his thing in yours, you passed the reproductive module sweeps ago with full marks. 

But now, taking in the brave face he’s put on over the welling apprehension, you curse yourself for procrastinating on the refresher courses. 

“Do I get on top or...?” you trail off awkwardly. “I could lie down, I mean, or turn around—”

“Just come here. If you think you’re hard enough.” He tugs you again and you growl again, knowing you’re being manipulated and resenting it through the rising haze of undefined want. You sprawl awkwardly over him and he wiggles beneath you, his ribs pushing up hard and awkward against your tender breasts and your hips grinding painfully together, and you feel so stupid you could scream. Who are either of you fooling, you want to run—then there’s something hot and sopping-wet against the tip of your bulge, something that parts to let you inside and you just feel stunned and grateful.

“Oh,” you say. 

“Oh,” he agrees, sounding just as small and surprised as you feel, and he clutches at your shoulders. “Oh, I—ah, TZ, oh god. Fuck. Go slow.” You shiver with something hotter than fear, at that, the cautious pleasure in his tone, and you brace yourself, elbows on his chest, fingers at his face, and just breathe. He’s got tears at the corners of his wide bright eyes and he’s chewing on his lower lip, worrying the dark flesh raw with his oversize fangs. You lean up, though it pulls your bulge out of him a bit, and take his mouth very carefully with your own. 

He makes a relieved noise and kisses you back, slow and methodical. It’s different than kissing Karkat: he has more teeth and a longer tongue, but he doesn’t tear at you. When you run your tongue over the ridges in his mouth he squeaks, and his hips jerk. You can feel—him, his nook, it clutches at your bulge when you do something he likes with his mouth, you can feel his pulse in his throat and his tongue and inside, deep inside, his seedflap contracting. More of that stunning heat takes you and you moan, reverent, shove in further despite your best intentions. You can list the parts and it sounds so clinical, like from the schoolfeed—here is the reproductive canal, here is the oral stimulation—but it feels like a hot red-gold soup of confusion and uncertainty and desire. There’s nothing clinical about it, or logical, or controllable. The more good it feels the less satisfied you get, the more you _want_. 

Sollux, too, apparently. His hands slide down to your backside to cup your butt and settle you down further between his legs. His bulge slithers against your hip, then the root of your bulge, feeling nothing like a finger or a tongue, then it finds your entrance and it’s _so_ slick, it’s soft and right even as it stretches you till you sting. You let your cheek rest against the stark rungs of his ribs and dare to circle your hips a bit, encouraging things along. It hurts but you’re hungry for it, you need him further into you while at the same time you yourself need to get further into him. He’s crying out like Karkat had, going “Fuck, oh fuck, oh,” high bitten-off incoherent pleas as he writhes beneath you. You want to split him open with your bulge and lose yourself inside, you want to keep him up inside you and stay just this one complicated interlocking creature forever. 

It all rises to a point, a sharp shattering, and you come back to yourself abruptly. Sound is louder and you realize your back is itchy with sweat and you have a thick gross string of drool coming off your chin. Your nook is sopping and sore and you want him out of it. 

“Please,” he babbles, “please please _please_ TZ oh, please,” and you feel more embarrassment than fondness, you feel revolted. You look around, wildly, squirming against his no-longer comforting hands. His nook’s not soft around you or nice, it’s tight and burning, he’s _devouring_ you and all you want is to get away. 

“Karkat,” you say, and you don’t mean for it to come out as scared as it does. You sound like you’re panicking. 

Karkat scrambles to your side, all wide eyes and hover-hands. 

“Is it—did you come, does he need—” 

Sollux nods fast, moans. “Just—a little more, ‘m sorry, sorry, I’m trying—”

“You’re gorgeous, you stupid jerk,” Karkat says, “come on, fuckhead, final lap, you can do it,” and bends down to throw a clumsy arm over his heaving chest. He peppers Sollux’s face in stupid-looking little kisses, but Sollux just makes a strangled gasp and turns his face up into it. They lock together at the mouth, fangs clicking, and then Karkat growls, “ _Come for her,_ ” and he does, you can feel it. Your nook floods with more genetic fluid than you can handle and his seedflap pulls at you in painful, rippling contractions, taking in what you’ve just barely managed to give, and it’s terrifying. Everything’s gone red and you’re sick of it, you can’t _breathe._ You feel frantic with longing to be done with this, to get away. 

“Oh god,” Karkat says, “Terezi, are you alright?” and you’ve never hated being blind so much as you do now. You claw your way out from the mess of hands and legs and squelching sore parts and squeeze your eyes shut, press your hands to your face to try and block out the reek. 

“Is she freaking out?” Sollux says. 

“She’s totally freaking out,” Karkat says. “Oh my fuck. Don’t you even think about freaking out too, you spazrocket, I will totally lose my shit and we will all die horribly. Kneel over the pail and do—whatever. Come on.”

“Okay, okay, fuck. Don’t poke me. I’ll bite you.”

“You already did and I liked it.”

“Eheh.”

Karkat comes to sit beside you. 

“I’ll bite you too,” you mutter, over the sound of Sollux making awful drippy noises and groans. 

“Okay,” he agrees. “I probably deserve it.”

“Don’t,” you say. “Could you just refrain from the—hating yourself thing, I. I can’t. Deal. With that right now.” 

“Sure, no, don’t be an idiot, I love myself,” he says, and the bright brittle good cheer feels like a lifeline. “Didn’t you know I’m the hottest shit you’ll ever get the chance to lay your burnt out freak-bulbs on? I’m totally great. Peachy-keen and ready for action. Everything that just transpired was completely fine with me in every possible way. Oh, here’s Sollux with the pail.” Sticky fingers brush your elbow. “Get up on your knees, okay, just—like that, yeah, you’re doing good. If you cry I will cry, so don’t cry.”

On your knees with the pail pressing into your thighs something changes, inside you, when you align your legs and hips— _yeah_ , you think, _okay, here_. The feeling of release isn’t so much pleasure as it is a deep, calming relief. You groan, feeling your frantic unhappiness start to ease, and Sollux snickers. 

You’re not quite sure when it’s over, until Karkat touches your shoulder again and eases the pail out from underneath you. The contents are overwhelmingly ochre, but still—there’s a streak of teal in there, there’s you. It should be enough. It should do. Sollux takes it and brings it over to the drone and you realize, horrified and darkly amused, that the front entrance has been open this whole time, the drone has been hunkered in front like a mewbeast at a mousehole and Karkat’s entire neighborhood’s heard you all squalling. 

Sollux says something quietly to the drone, and holds up the pail, and there’s a long, long moment where everything hangs in the balance. Then it hooks one vast sickle claw through the handle, raises it up, and rumbles approval. 

“Your contribution has been noted and appreciated, Sollux Captor and Terezi Pyrope. You have done well and the Empress is hella proud of you. Long live the Empress. Long live our Empire.”

The door closes.

“We got stickers,” Sollux says. He giggles, nasal and disbelieving, and comes back over. Stuck to his bare, sweat-damp shoulder is a metallic fuschia lip-print with XXX glittering underneath. He holds up a little square for you. It’s a holographic black and white flipperbeast, with KILLER JOB!! printed in hot pink bubble letters around it. It gnashes fangs when you rotate the sticker back and forth. Karkat makes a little jealous noise. 

“I am going to frame this,” you say, taking it very carefully between two claws and tucking it into a lemon sylladex card. 

You feel numb, shocked-empty, like when you were small and had cracked a horn falling out of a tree, or broken your leg FLARPing, or the evening after you’d gone blind. The whole world’s gone different from the newness of what you now know about yourself and your limitations, and you’re just sitting here at the center of it, breathing fast and light like you’re a wiggler who thinks the pain won’t hit if you’re quiet enough. 

Ridiculous, of course. You need to get up and face what happened squarely. 

“I get the shower first,” you determine, and climb to your feet. 

“Are you still freaking out?” Karkat says. You swat him, then head up the stairs. 

You freak out in the shower, after setting the water as cold as it will go. It comes down like needles down on your shoulders and you let yourself cry, explosively, claws raking at the tile over and over. 

“Fuck,” you sob, like a wiggler, “Fuck, fuck, oh god, fuck,” like that will change anything. 

You cry yourself clean, and then you take the soap and tend to your scratches and bites. Your aching bulge is back in its sheathe, and if you don’t see it again for a hundred sweeps that’ll be too soon. It felt good, it did, you learned fast enough, you made it through. But you don’t want to do it again _ever_.

Karkat doesn’t have any towels that don’t stink, so you shake yourself dry as best as you can and put on a fresh change of clothes. They smell of the previous dimseason and you’re not sure if they’re a little too tight on you because they’re old or if anything more fitted than a thermal drape would be too tight on you. Both, maybe. You get out a daycloak, though, the kind with a shaped hood and button-eyes you used to use to play pretend with, and you wrap it around your shoulders tightly. It feels inane to seek out such a pre-pupescent comfort like this, as if you could ever fit back into a cocoon or a child’s day-dream, but an inane comfort is still a comfort. 

When you push the ablution door open you find Karkat and Sollux sitting in the hallway, holding hands. They smell awful, all sticky and fearful, and your heart twists with guilt. If you’d just let Karkat have his space to work out his own problems, if you hadn’t thought you were such a clever fucking adjudicator, with your sword and your smarts, none of this would have happened. But you’d stuck your nose where it didn’t belong and now here are your friends, your very dear friends, and they smell like sex and shame. 

“I’m sorry,” you say quietly. “I shouldn’t have gotten us all into this.” 

“No, I’m—” they both say, and break off to glare at each other. “It was _my_ —” they try again, and you laugh. It’s raw and uncertain, but it feels good. You sit down in front of them, knee to knee to knee, and take their free hands. 

“We’re all idiots,” you say, and smile. “We’re all idiots and we should have died. So. Where _did_ you want us to plant the citrus orchard, Karkles?”

He opens his mouth, closes it. 

“By the wishing fountain,” he says quietly. “It’s the most efficient location to harvest.”

“Wait, only if you’re going there straight from your hive,” Sollux frowns. “If we plant them by the shore—”

“Then we have to deal with sea-villagers poaching the fruit, it’s a nuisance!” 

Your laugh comes more easily this time, more sincerely, and when you squeeze their hands they squeeze back.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Night has always pushed up day_  
>  _You must know life to see decay_  
>  _But I won't rot, I won't rot_  
>  _Not this mind and not this heart,_  
>  _I won't rot._  
>  —Mumford And Sons, "After The Storm"


End file.
